


Hell Bound

by CloudDreamer



Series: Demon Eyes [4]
Category: Dr Carmilla (Musician), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Bombing, Cannibalism, Eating Disorders, Feeding, Feral Behavior, Gun Violence, Horror, Hurt No Comfort, Loss of Control, No happy endings, Self-Harm, The Siren Saga, Vampires, presumably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:48:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23597851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: The first time might not have been the worst, not by a long shot, but it was the first, and it was the one Doctor Carmilla remembered with the most clarity.Title from “Demons” by Imagine Dragons.
Series: Demon Eyes [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1698556
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	Hell Bound

**Author's Note:**

> Take the tags seriously. There's nothing fun here.

Carmilla doesn’t remember the first time she lost control. 

That’s not entirely true. She barely remembers the before, the hours, days, weeks, spent trying to find another explanation, the nauseating blend of trying desperately to force something, anything to stay down her throat and the hours of vomiting afterwards, even when she’d long since expelled the disgusting taste. She knows people were concerned for her, that they were starting to ask questions, but she doesn’t know the answers she gave, if she gave any. 

It’s the aftermath she remembers in cruel clarity. Carmilla had stumbled back to her apartment, too terrified of losing herself again to articulate anything that wasn’t a quiet “no,” again and again. There was nobody left inside, nobody to great her and say welcome home only to see the shape she was in and run, only for her teeth to end up around their neck, their leg. She didn’t even have her keys. 

She just tore the door off its hinges, and ran to the bathroom. She stayed there for hours, maybe days, trying to wash away the gore in any way she could think of. She’d shoved her fingers down her throat, forcing the vomit up her throat and choking, partially digested organs spilling across her bathroom floor, only barely reaching the toilet. 

It wasn’t the bits and pieces that’d brought her back to herself, satisfying that damned need, but they were staying down. Her conscious horror at the sight of a deflated eyeball, pierced by and sloppily chewed with her elongated teeth. She reached into her mouth and felt out her canines, still covered in bits of vomit and blood, and vomited all over again, not even needing to force it. The smell of rot surrounded her, and it was so hot in here. She’d never thought it was hot before. If anything, the air around her should’ve been too cold. She should be shivering from more than the fear. 

She took her temperature, and she thought for a moment she’d somehow switched the units back because that wasn’t possible. She was alive. She could feel her hands, could push them against where her heart should be... there wasn’t the familiar thrum. The pounding in the back of her head that she’d mistaken for her heartbeat was her hunger. She laughed shallowly, staring at her reflection. Her fucked up eye was a mess. She pulled her eyelid down, tried to prod at it, but the rapid healing that’d pushed her through what had to have been dozens of bullet wounds refused to kick in. 

Several of those bullets were still in her, and she buried her fingers, with sharp nails and unnatural strength, into her flesh. She fished around, gasps she made closing just as she opened them. The squamous texture of her body made her stomach heave again, but it was already empty, everything she’d consumed purged. She didn’t know if she needed to take the metal out or not, but leaving lead inside her body didn’t sound fun. Even if this unnatural disease meant could keep her alive, she didn’t fancy dealing with the symptoms of lead poisoning. And if she let them in, and she didn’t get sick at all? 

She closed her functioning eye tight so she didn’t have to look while she ripped a bullet out through her skin, again, her own viscera covering her hand this time. She tried to bite down the scream, but found her teeth passing right through her lips, tearing them up almost as bad as the billets had. The ruined eye didn’t respond at all. She swore, tears blurring her already shitty vision further, feeling the pressure of the dozen others. She pulled back, looked at herself in the mirror for just a moment, and it was a terrible mistake. 

She dropped the bullet in the sink, covered in chunks of flesh and blood that looked appealing, somehow. She’d already dragged herself into the shower, let the freezing water wash over her and chill her to her already frozen bones without removing whatever remaining fragments of her clothes that still stuck to her, but that barely seemed to make a dent in the damage. She’d need to run from here, the only place she’d almost managed to feel at home at, it was a mess. She’d poked through enough biology textbooks in her time, but she’d never imagined how those pieces, always properly labeled and defined with crisp sketchy edges, would look dragged through the mud and ash. Lungs, brains, and god, was that a heart? 

Had they bombed her, trying to get her to stop? She thought she could remember the sounds of the sirens blaring, louder and closer than ever before. There were patches of what passed for blood in her body around her ears, her nose, her mouth, beneath the normal bits. Her memories of that time weren’t gone. She knew what she’d done. She’d wanted to —she still wanted to. 

Her red hair stuck to her scalp, and Carmilla wasn’t sure what parts of the color was the cheap dye or some innocent fool she’d torn apart with her bare hands. Her features were the same, same nose she’d gotten broken and rebroken more than half a dozen times, same piercings and tattoos, but the context was all different. Her teeth were still awkward and misplaced, but they were sharper. If she forced a smile, she looked cruel. She looked unhinged, not scared. Not terrified. She hadn’t asked for this— she couldn’t breathe. 

Oh god, she didn’t need to breathe. She forced the air through her lungs, but they responded so sluggishly, like they were out of practice. She shoved her hand back inside, this time in her chest. She ran against bone and pushed too hard. She choked in horror and in pain as she broke her own rib with a careless push. It knit back together, and she pushed it up to tear out the bullet. 

She shook her head, voice raw from screaming until it wasn’t anymore. She shrunk inwards, not ready to do that again and be reminded of how easily she’d ripped through the bone of those who’d came to stop her. She’d let one of them put the barrel of their gun in her mouth in a moment of temporary control, desperate to just stop, stop the hunger from consuming her whole, and she’d felt the skull— she’d felt it shatter, felt it rip through her brain, and she’d only stopped for a moment. 

The monster had regained control in the moments Carmilla was gone. She couldn’t keep her head in her knees, couldn’t keep from looking to see the splinters of plastic she’d vomited up from when she’d bitten through their gun and then their body. She couldn’t even remember the soldier’s face. The soldiers, they weren’t good people. She’d hated them, she’d tried to force herself away from the innocents that’d run, and the monster had listened. The lightning coursing through her veins instead of life, that wasn’t some sort of foreign force. 

This… extended death hadn’t changed her; it’d freed her. How many times had she wanted to rip those fuckers apart for what they’d done, what they were doing? She hadn’t meant it, right? Not like that, not like this. She hadn’t wanted that. She hadn’t. She sobbed into her knees, pushing her head inwards. Too late she realized her knees weren’t just hurting from the pressure, the bone there was breaking, and she screamed, letting out small gasps. She still needed to breath to talk, to scream, to cry out the truth— Carmilla hadn’t wanted that. 

Carmilla should’ve been cold, with the weather, with her temperature, with the ice cold shower, but she felt hot. She burned. Everything about her was on fire, every nerve ending ached from punishment. If there was an organ in her that hadn’t been splattered across the concrete ground or a bit of skin that wasn’t torn open, torn into pieces again and again, then she couldn’t tell. How many people were dead? How many people had she killed? How many had deserved it? She didn’t want the numbers, didn’t want to know, but her mind dragged waves of memories back, counting off. It didn’t matter, she couldn’t tell, it was too many. One was too many. If the soldiers were monsters, what did that make her? 

She screamed, and it wasn’t out of rage or hunger or desperation. She didn’t know what it was. Carmilla just needed to get it out, get all of this out of her. There was poison inside her, and when she slammed her palm against the floor, both the bones and the tile cracked. It hurt, but only for a moment, only for long enough to make her suffer. There wasn’t a choice— she’d never get a choice. Every way she tore herself apart was put back together and all that lingered was the unbearable pain. Everything about her was pain now, and it wouldn’t go away as easily as the wounds would.


End file.
